Disposable paper products are widely used. Disposable consumer items, made from cellulosic fibers, are commercially offered in formats tailored for a variety of uses, such as, for example, facial tissues, toilet paper, absorbent towels, diapers, etc.
All of these sanitary products share a common need, specifically--to be soft to the touch. Softness is a complex tactile impression evoked by a product when it is stroked against the skin. The purpose of being soft is so that these products can be used to cleanse the skin without being irritating. Effectively cleansing the skin is a persistent personal hygiene problem for many people. Objectionable discharges of urine, menses, and fecal matter from the perineal area or otorhinolaryngogical mucus discharges do not always occur at a time convenient for one to perform a thorough cleansing, as with soap and copious amounts of water for example. As a substitute for thorough cleansing, a wide variety of tissue and toweling products are offered to aid in the task of removing from the skin and retaining such discharges for disposal in a sanitary fashion. Not surprisingly, the use of these products does not approach the level of cleanliness that can be achieved by the more thorough cleansing methods, and producers of tissue and toweling products are constantly striving to make their products compete more favorably with thorough cleansing methods.
Shortcomings in tissue products for example cause many to stop cleaning before the skin is completely cleansed. Such behavior is prompted by the harshness of the tissue, as continued rubbing with a harsh implement can abrade the sensitive skin and cause severe pain. The alternative, leaving the skin partially cleansed, is chosen even though this often causes malodors to emanate and can cause staining of undergarments, and over time can cause skin irritations as well.
Disorders of the anus, for example hemorrhoids, render the perianal area extremely sensitive and cause those who suffer such disorders to be particularly frustrated by the need to clean their anus without prompting irritation.
Another notable case which prompts frustration is the repeated nose blowing necessary when one has a cold. Repeated cycles of blowing and wiping can culminate in a sore nose even when the softest tissues available today are employed.
Accordingly, making soft tissue and toweling products which promote comfortable cleaning without performance impairing sacrifices has long been the goal of the engineers and scientists who are devoted to research into improving tissue paper. There have been numerous attempts to reduce the abrasive effect, i.e., improve the softness of tissue products.
One area that has been explored in this regard has been to select and modify cellulose fiber morphologies and engineer paper structures to take optimum advantages of the various available morphologies. Applicable art in this area includes: Vinson et. al. in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,228,954, issued Jul. 20, 1993, Vinson in 5,405,499, issued Apr. 11, 1995, Cochrane et al. in 4,874,465 issued Oct. 17, 1989, and Hermans, et. al. in U. S. Statutory Invention Registration H1672, published on Aug. 5, 1997, all of which disclose methods for selecting or upgrading fiber sources to tissue and toweling of superior properties. Applicable art is further illustrated by Carstens in U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,981, issued Nov. 17, 1981, which discusses how fibers can be incorporated to be compliant to paper structures so that they have maximum softness potential. While such techniques as illustrated by these prior art examples are recognized broadly, they can only offer some limited potential to make tissues truly effective comfortable cleaning implements.
Another area which has received a considerable amount of attention is the addition of a chemical softening agent (also referred to herein as "chemical softener" or "softening composition" and permutation thereof) to tissue and toweling products. As used herein, the term "chemical softening agent" refers to any chemical ingredient which improves the tactile sensation perceived by the consumer who holds a particular paper product and rubs it across the skin. Desirable for towel products, softness is a particularly important property for facial and toilet tissues. Such tactilely perceivable softness can be characterized by, but is not limited to, friction, flexibility, and smoothness, as well as subjective descriptors, such as a feeling like lubricious, velvet, silk or flannel. Suitable materials include those which impart a lubricious feel to tissue. This includes, for exemplary purposes only, basic waxes such as paraffin and beeswax and oils such as mineral oil and silicone oil as well as petrolatum and more complex lubricants and emollients such as quaternary ammonium compounds with long alkyl chains, functional silicones, fatty acids, fatty alcohols and fatty esters.
The field of work in the prior art pertaining to chemical softeners has taken two paths. The first path is characterized by the addition of softeners to the tissue paper web during its formation either by adding an attractive ingredient to the vats of pulp which will ultimately be formed into a tissue paper web, to the pulp slurry as it approaches a paper making machine, or to the wet web as it resides on a Fourdrinier cloth or dryer cloth on a paper making machine. The second path is categorized by the addition of chemical softeners to tissue paper web after the web is dried. In the latter instance, typically the softener is applied to one or both sides of the tissue paper. Applicable processes can be incorporated into the paper making operation as, for example, by spraying onto the dry web before it is wound into a roll of paper.
Exemplary art related to the former path categorized by adding chemical softeners to the tissue paper prior to its assembly into a web includes commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,264,082, issued to Phan and Trokhan on Nov. 23, 1993, which patent is incorporated herein by reference. Such methods have found broad use in the industry especially when it is desirable to reduce the strength which would otherwise be present in the paper, and when the papermaking process (particularly one having a creping operation) is robust enough to tolerate incorporation of the bond inhibiting agents. However, there are problems associated with these methods, well known to those skilled in the art. First, the location of the chemical softener is not controlled; it is spread as broadly through the paper structure as the fiber furnish to which it is applied. In addition, there is a loss of paper strength accompanying use of these additives. While not being bound by theory, applicants believe that the additives tend to inhibit the formation of fiber to fiber hydrogen bonds. There also can be a loss of control of the sheet as it is creped from the Yankee dryer. Again, a widely believed theory is that the additives interfere with the coating on the Yankee dryer so that the bond between the wet web and the dryer is weakened. Prior art such as commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,813, issued to Vinson, et. al., Jan. 30, 1996, incorporated herein by reference, discloses inclusion of a chemical combination to mitigate the before-mentioned effects on strength and adhesion to the creping cylinder; however, there still remains a need to incorporate a chemical softener into a paper web in a targeted fashion with minimal adverse effect on web strength and minimal interference with the production process.
Further exemplary art related to the addition of chemical softeners to the tissue paper web during its formation includes commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,059,282, issued to Ampulski, et. al. on Oct. 22, 1991 incorporated herein by reference. The Ampulski patent discloses a process for adding a polysiloxane compound to a wet tissue web (preferably at a fiber consistency between about 20% and about 35%). Such a method represents an advance in some respects over the addition of chemicals into the slurry vats supplying the papermaking machine. For example, such means target the application to one of the web surfaces as opposed to distributing the additive onto all of the fibers of the furnish.
Because of the before-mentioned effects on strength and disruption of the papermaking process, considerable art has been devised to apply chemical softeners to already-dried paper webs either at the so-called dry end of the papermaking machine or in a separate converting operation subsequent to the papermaking step. Exemplary art from this field includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,215,626, issued to Ampulski, et. al. on Jun. 1, 1993; 5,246,545, issued to Ampulski, et. al. on Sep. 21, 1993; 5,525,345, issued to Warner, et. al. on Jun. 11, 1996, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/053,319 filed in the name of Vinson, et al. on Apr. 1, 1998 all incorporated herein by reference. While each of these references represent advances over the previous so-called wet end methods particularly with regard to eliminating the degrading effects on the papermaking process, the processes typically require that the softening application occur simultaneously with compression of the web. Along with the loss of thickness of the tissue paper web, which can be an issue, these methods of application do not allow effective application of softener to the outermost elevations of the tissue paper web, when multi-region tissue webs having multiple elevations is employed. The before mentioned application processes also do not yield proud deposits, i.e. deposits which extend above the outermost elevation of the tissue paper web. This is essential for the before-mentioned processes because proud deposits tend to be removed from the web onto machine surfaces causing processing problems due to transfer of the softeners. If proud deposits could be applied without these transfer and build-up issues, it would be advantageous because transfer could thereby be encouraged from one surface of a tissue paper web to the second surface of the web, permitting in effect a two-sided surface softened tissue paper web, while only actively applying the surface softener to one side.
One of the most important physical properties related to softness is generally considered by those skilled in the art to be the strength of the web. Strength is the ability of the product, and its constituent webs, to maintain physical integrity and to resist tearing, bursting, and shredding under use conditions. Achieving high softness without degrading strength has long been recognized as a means of providing improved tissue products. There is a continuing need for soft tissue paper products having good strength properties.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved surface softening techniques that can be applied to such tissue products to provide the requisite softness without unacceptably degrading the strength of the product or other important properties thereof. Further, there is a need for surface softened tissue paper webs in which the surface softener is applied by non-compressive techniques to the outermost elevation of a multi-elevation web. Finally, there is a need for providing a two-sided surface softened tissue paper web using a one-sided surface application of the softening technique.
Such improved products and methods are provided by the present invention as is shown in the following disclosure.